


5 times Arthur saved Trelawny, and 1 time Trelawny returned the favor

by orphan_account



Category: Red Dead Redemption (Video Games)
Genre: 5+1 Things, Action, Adventure, Angst, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Mutual Pining, not that they know that
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-01-09
Updated: 2020-01-09
Packaged: 2021-02-27 06:27:19
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,576
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22182535
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: In which Arthur and Trelawny keep getting themselves into dangerous situations, and neither of them can take a hint.
Relationships: Arthur Morgan/Josiah Trelawny
Comments: 3
Kudos: 24





	5 times Arthur saved Trelawny, and 1 time Trelawny returned the favor

**Author's Note:**

> I'm not even sure why I like this pairing so much, especially considering how little attention it gets, but here I am, I suppose, trying to fight against this injustice. 
> 
> This work is vaguely set some time during RDR2, but I'm not going to focus on keeping it completely canon-compliant. Basically, everyone in the gang is alive, the Pinkertons have become somewhat lazy, and everything plot-wise is kept in a comfortable stasis so the central focus can stay on the relationship between Arthur and Trelawny.
> 
> One significant deviation from canon (relative to this fic): Trelawny doesn't have a wife or kids. If he did, it would make this entire fic a lot less romantic and much more ethically and morally dubious, so he just doesn't have them.

“The plan… is simple.” Micah traces the pencil over the map, leaving a coarse grey line that follows their circuitous path into town, through the bank, and out the back. He backtracks to a junction in town adjacent to the bank, drawing another thick line that branches out from the original and heads for the nearest exit.

“Trelawny and Arthur will enter the bank. Once Trelawny’s gotten the teller to open the vault, Arthur’ll come in guns blazing and grab all the valuables. John and I will stay outside and stop anyone from coming in or out.” He leans forward eagerly, his face assuming some disconcerting mix between a scowl and grin. “We’ll wait 5 minutes for you to grab everything, then Lenny over here will blow a hole through the wall and give you a way to exit. We’ll draw the lawmen away while you three make away with all the gold.” He doesn’t seem particularly enthused about this part of the plan, though that can be easily attributed to the fact that he had to modify it to get anyone to join the heist (the original plan had involved Micah running with the money while everyone else got into a full-blown shoot-out with the law).

“Got that?” he says, and though it seems like he’s addressing the whole group, he glares pointedly at Arthur. Arthur, equally purposely, ignores his heated stare and turns to Trelawny, who has taken to nervously adjusting his cufflinks.

“You alright?” he asks with unusual gentleness. “There’s no shame in backing out of this cockamamie heist. We can get someone else.” He desperately hopes Trelawny’s sense of self-preservation has finally won out as it usually does, as inexplicably as it hasn’t this one time.

“No, no, I’m alright, Arthur,” Trelawny replies, gracing him with a tremulous smile. “Just a bit anxious, is all. I’ve always hated gunfights.”

“I know,” Arthur replies softly. He resists the urge to take the magician’s hand in his.

“Not a surprise,” Micah sneers viciously. “I don’t know why the hell I let a slippery eel like you get involved anyhow.” Arthur vaguely recalls some phrase regarding talking pots.

Arthur has long since given up on trying to dignify Micah’s jeers with an intelligent response. He imagines he’d have to become the wittiest man of all time, capable of making a smart comment every millisecond, for that to be possible. Instead, he simply says, “shut up, Micah.” Lenny smartly muffles his chuckle with a hand.

Micah sputters slightly as his face takes on a pink hue. “Hey, I’m the boss of this operation, Morgan. You’d do well to pay me some respect.”

“Yeah, I’ll do that,” Arthur says unkindly. “I’ll do that when you stop being such a goddamned miserable, money-grubbing pain in the ass.”

Micah rounds the table with a dangerous glint in his eye, but Arthur only feels the stirring of true anger, as opposed to irritation, in his gut when he roughly shoves Trelawny aside to get closer.

“You ain’t so great yourself, Mr. Morgan,” Micah hisses nastily. “I didn’t force you to become an outlaw. I didn’t force you to murder countless men in selfish pursuit of freedom. Just you remember that the next time you mouth off to me.”

“I’m not mouthing off to anyone, Micah,” Arthur snarls back. “And maybe you would notice that if you didn’t spend every single second trying to intimidate everyone around you. It’s sad, really,” Arthur adds with a wry grin, “because everyone here knows what a coward and a liar you are.”

Micah draws even closer, so close their chests bump against each other. Arthur instinctively reaches back for his knife, his hand clutching the familiar handle with certainly malicious intent. He’ll not strike the first blow, but he won’t leave himself defenseless either if Micah chooses to.

“Perhaps we should get ready,” Trelawny interjects uneasily from several feet away. “Still much to be done before the big heist.”

Arthur reluctantly steps back, though he keeps his gaze firmly on Micah and his hands. “You’re not worth the time,” he spits out.

“You running, Morgan?” Micah taunts, though he seems rather relieved when Arthur begins to walk away. “Running with your tail tucked between your legs? Now who’s the coward?”

Arthur doesn’t bother to respond this time. He strides to his tent with purpose, his mind so preoccupied considering the various facets of the heist that he doesn’t even notice the footsteps approaching him.

“You really shouldn’t provoke him like that,” Trelawny says amicably. He tugs once at his waistcoat uncomfortably.

“He’s a rat, Trelawny,” Arthur replies heavily. His hands twitch towards the rifle on the table, and he allows them to begin their practiced routine of cleaning it and checking for nicks.

“Even so, he does seem to intend to stay. I think it would be best if you at least tried to get along.”

Arthur feels an indignant retort, borne from an innate need to privacy and no real malice, bubble up in his throat, but he swiftly pushes it down before his mouth opens. He isn’t exactly sure why, but where he’d feel fine lashing out at anyone else for meddling, he feels exceedingly reluctant to do so with Trelawny.

“Yeah, maybe,” Arthur admits tiredly, half to appease Trelawny, half because he does understand that nothing good can come from fermenting Micah’s ill-will. He may be an immoral, egotistical bastard with no redeeming qualities, but he also makes for a formidable enemy. No gunman survives in the Van der Linde gang without a respectable skill with guns. Or perhaps Micah’s just that good at surviving – a lot like a cockroach, really.

For several seconds, both men remain silent, and the ordinary background sounds of camp – horses neighing, people arguing, fires crackling – occupy the sudden absence in conversation. Arthur lets his mind wander back to the rifle in his hands.

“Arthur,” Trelawny begins. His discomfort is clear and a far cry from his usual English bluster. “Could I speak to you about something?”

Arthur’s hands halt their cleaning and gently set down the rifle. He receives the distinct feeling something important is occurring, one that deserves his full and undivided attention. “What is it?” he says, and his voice has instinctively gone to a lower, softer pitch, one he normally only uses to calm down frightened horses.

Trelawny clears his throat once. Then, he tugs vainly at his cufflinks, which barely budge in response to his erratic fiddling. He shuffles slightly backward, then forward, then backward once more. His eyes have apparently assumed the properties of a rubber ball, as they dart around nervously in every which direction. Arthur swears he can see a slight blush forming on his cheeks. He doesn’t dare say anything for fear of ruining whatever strange but not disagreeable thing is happening right now.

“Well,” he says eventually, after perhaps half-a-minute of mutually anxious silence, “I just thought I should ask-“

“Hey, you two, we’re about to get going,” John calls, his feet crunching noisily on the gravel pathway as he approaches.

Arthur’s never seen anyone electrocuted, but he imagines Trelawny’s reaction to John’s voice – a discontinuation of all movement accompanied by a face that’s just witnessed flying pigs – is a fairly accurate representation of how it must feel.

“Of course, of course,” Trelawny says hurriedly, seeming inexplicably relieved by the interruption. He turns away and strides briskly in the direction of his horse.

“What was that?” John asks, jerking a thumb backwards.

Arthur scowls at him as he slings the rifle over his back. “None of your goddamned business.”

Even John, who has long since grown accustomed to Arthur’s curmudgeonly moods, flinches slightly. It isn’t fair to him, Arthur knows, but he can’t help but feel he disrupted something major.

At the very least, the younger man doesn’t seem dissuaded by Arthur’s irascible retort. As he half-jogs to catch up to Arthur, he says, “you’ve been spending an awful lot of time with him recently.”

Arthur says something to the effect of “mind your own affairs or I’ll make you” even as he silently acknowledges the truth of the statement. He isn’t exactly sure of either the start or cause of the transition, but it would take a fool dumber than him not to recognize that Trelawny, who used to linger at camp for no more than an hour at a time and who usually only stayed for as long as it took him to eat the free stew and make some polite (or as polite as the Van der Linde gang could be) conversation, has taken to staying for much longer stretches of time. In direct proportion, the amount of time Arthur spends in his presence has increased as well. Somewhere along the way, Trelawny went from being a work acquaintance to an ally, then a valued friend, then something else, something more, that Arthur definitely isn’t about to name. For several months now, they’ve been trapped in a limbo, dancing around each other frightfully as if a single touch would send the other running. Considering Trelawny’s reaction just now, that might not be too far from the truth.

Arthur’s been with both women and men before, but never the way he is with Trelawny. He’s always known what he’s wanted and taken it with the confidence of an outlaw (and the grace of a gentleman, though he would never admit it). He’s never had to perform this dizzying routine, never had to question his position with someone else in a romantic sense. Trelawny’s hesitance might have been indicative of a confession, but it might as well have also been a rejection. It might have not been about their relationship at all. Arthur has no idea what to think.

John utters a noncommittal sound and drifts off to outfit his horse. Arthur’s own stallion, a grey-black beauty with a well-combed white mane, had already been prepared well in advance, and he whinnies impatiently as Arthur approaches.

He mounts the horse in one fluid motion, as easily as another person would walk or talk. He looks around the camp absently, not entirely sure of what he’s looking for until he finds it – or him.

Trelawny has always had a way about him, an air of elegance and dignity that allows him to fit in just as easily in a formal ball as here at camp. Now, however, he seems distinctly out of place, a blinding white spot in a sea of pure black. His face grows paler as his hand brushes against the pistol attached to his mare’s side. Arthur had given it to him not a minute after Micah hassled them to join his heist.

“Can’t rob a bank without a gun,” he had said, his voice strained with a forced lightness.

“Oh, right,” Trelawny had replied uncomfortably. He regarded the pistol as if Arthur were instead handing him a pile of horse poop. “Thank you, my dear.”

Arthur can’t help but feel slightly guilty at Trelawny’s blatant discomfort. He doesn’t regret giving him the pistol in the slightest, but it worries him to see the magician so uneasy and distressed, especially when they’re about to participate in a high-stakes bank robbery that will, more likely than not, involve getting shot at. More than anything, it’s jarring to see. Arthur is used to seeing Trelawny as a mostly unflappable con man, a criminal with a plan for every eventuality (so long as they don’t involve shooting, Arthur imagines his plan for that is to cower and hide) and an iron will to match his daring schemes. He spent years wondering if Trelawny would ever set down his mask and let himself be anything but generally affable, and now, simply watching him unhitch his horse, it’s as if the walls were never there to begin with.

Or perhaps he’s just become much better at seeing through them.

“Hey, Morgan, you just going to sit there with that stupid look on your face?” Micah jeers scathingly. His horse makes a pitifully low whimper as he harshly tugs at the reins.

“I’m coming,” Arthur replies, making no attempt to hide the disgust or contempt he feels for the other man. He steers his horse clockwise and leads it out of the camp, pausing only to let Trelawny catch up. For some baffling reason, he feels better simply knowing the other is by his side.

“So you see,” Trelawny explains with all the grandeur and pompousness a regular participant of high society might have, “I do indeed have a rather considerable deposit here. Are you telling me you’re so disorganized you’ve forgotten about one of your greatest benefactors?”

Arthur doesn’t think banks can have benefactors, but the clerk behind the counter still flushes at Trelawney’s raised eyebrow. “V-Very sorry, sir, I’m new here, you see, I haven’t become acquainted with the books, er, as it were.”

Trelawney waves off his nervous apology with one gloved hand. “It’s fine. Just retrieve my money now and I won’t tell anyone about this grievous mistake.”

Arthur can only marvel at the display in front of him as the clerk eagerly bounds off to the large metal door behind him. Just a minute ago, the clerk had been threatening to call the sheriff over to arrest Trelawney for “fraudulent claims,” and now here he is, hurriedly opening the vault as if his job depends on it.

Arthur stifles a sigh as he adjusts his rifle strap and waits for the clerk to finish unlocking the door. Trelawny has competently played his part, and now it is time for Arthur to play his.

A sharp clicking sound emits from the door, and the heavy metal creaks open on sturdy if not well-lubricated hinges. The clerk moves back one step and guides the door open, and it is then that Arthur makes his move.

Unslinging the rifle from around his torso, he points it upward and presses down on the trigger. The shot rings out through the entire bank, silencing conversations and movement alike. The clerk leaps back, then freezes as he sees Arthur.

“Nobody move!” he shouts coarsely. “This is a robbery! If my partner here-“ he nods at Trelawny, who has already given up the act and pulled out his pistol, “-catches any of you moving so much as inch, he’ll put one in your skull, you understand!?” Understandably, no one replies verbally, but there is much panicked head bobbing.

With that first and final warning, he slips into the vault and leaves the hostages to Trelawny. As unused as the magician might be to these sorts of crimes, Arthur has more than enough faith he’ll perform his duty in this second half of the heist just as well as he did in the first.

The vault is a rather unimpressive, smallish brick room with a single wall dedicated to housing its many riches. The lowest shelf leans slightly downward from the weight of all the bankrolls that rest on top. Arthur unhooks one of the rucksack bags from underneath his trench coat and quickly begins shoveling in cash in armfuls. The task takes perhaps 15 seconds, and when Arthur is done, he drops the bag with a satisfied huff and surveys the safes above.

“Hey, how’s it going out there!?” he shouts as he presses his ear against the first safe and begins turning the dial.

“Fine, fine!” returns Trelawny’s mostly calm voice. “I should think everybody here’s smart enough to know not to sacrifice their lives for a bit of money!” Arthur wonders if Trelawny would truly make good on their joint threat if someone were to move. Some small part of him perplexingly hopes he wouldn’t.

The vault clicks open, and Arthur wastes no time in hauling the bag up slightly and pushing in the gold bars and rolls of cash found inside. With a nervousness he’s never quite managed to quell despite his many years of experience doing bank heists, he tries to recall how long he has before Lenny blows open the wall to his right.

As if on command, Trelawny calls from the other room, “you have about a minute left, dear boy!”

Arthur has long since grown accustomed to the immense stress that inevitably comes from these kinds of robberies, but even as his hands remain steady his mind whirs away with countless, increasingly negative scenarios. He hasn’t survived so long in this business by ignoring reality, and so he reluctantly admits that their chances of getting away unscathed are relatively low. Soon enough, someone is going to notice something is amiss in the bank, and when the sheriff’s office founds out and storms the bank, their first victim will be Trelawny. That thought alone is enough to make even his hands tremble, though he quickly smooths them out before they can do any real damage to his progress.

The next safe clicks open. Arthur shoves in the next round of gold and cash. He estimates he has a half-a-minute left before the wall blows.

There is a sudden crash outside as someone violently pushes the doors to the bank open. Arthur freezes for a moment, then forcibly loosens when no gunshot sounds.

“Arthur!” John shouts hoarsely. “The sheriff’s been alerted, you have to go! Now!”

“I don’t mean to stress you, Arthur,” Trelawny says, “but how far are you along in there?”

“Almost there!” Arthur calls back. “Just give me twenty more seconds!” He forces his fingers to slow along the dial despite the screaming urge to hasten his pace – he learned many years back that, even in his trade, some things don’t benefit from speed – namely, safe-breaking.

“We might not have twenty seconds!” John yells. “The second a shot is fired, Lenny’s igniting the fuse! Just- be ready!”

“This isn’t something you can rush!” Arthur retorts, especially irritated because John, even if he isn’t as proficient as Arthur, should understand just as well that safe-breaking deteriorates in the face of panic and haste. 

The opening of the third safe is, unfortunately, accompanied by the distinct crack of gunfire. Arthur shovels in the next group of gold and cash before dragging both bags to the wall of the vault adjacent to the main room. He covers both ears and waits anxiously for the explosion.

It comes a second later. Bricks propel inward and dissolve as the boom shakes the room violently. Arthur squints through the cloud of white dust, coughing several times and forcefully expelling small clouds of powder. Through the gathering haze, Lenny’s figure emerges.

“Shit, Arthur, you okay?” Lenny shouts over the renewed crackle of gunfire, made all the louder by the new opening to the outside. He kneels and places one hand on Arthur’s shoulder.

The coughing fit finally abates. “I’m good,” Arthur replies roughly.

Another man, this one in the finery of a rich aristocrat, rushes into the vault. Arthur notes with sudden relief that it is Trelawny and that he seems unharmed. In fact, he’s somehow even managed to retain his top hat, though it rests slightly askew atop his head.

“Glad to see you, Lenny,” Trelawny says quickly. “We should be going, then.” Wordlessly, he grips a bag and heaves it over his shoulder with a grunt.

“Yeah, sure,” Lenny says, and the hand not on Arthur’s shoulder strays to the other sack. “You sure you’re okay?”

“I already said I am,” Arthur snaps, though he feels immediately guilty afterward. Lenny doesn’t seem too fazed, however, his expression barely shifting as he pulls the bag over his shoulder and gestures for the other two to follow him.

“Come on,” he shouts over the persistent gunfire, “I charted a path out of here.”

Arthur glances over at Trelawny, who staggers visibly from the weight of his bag. From the bumps and shadows, he infers it’s the one containing all the heavy gold, and he wonders why Trelawny, who must have realized the same thing as soon as he saw it, purposely chose to carry that one in particular.

“You going to be alright?” he asks cautiously.

With an unusual moodiness, Trelawny says, “Why wouldn’t I be? We should get moving.”

Arthur raises his hands in a gesture of reconciliation, allowing Trelawny to trudge past and immediately following him through the murky white cloud. His hands clench unconsciously around his rifle.

“Just to the right here, down this alley,” Lenny calls from ahead. “We’ll put a couple of blocks between us and the lawmen and then leave town.”

“How’d they find out?” Arthur inquires as they exit the cloud and continue down the alleyway.

Lenny rounds the corner and turns right. “I think some kid saw through a window, then his mom ran over to the sheriff’s office.”

“An unfortunate turn of events,” Trelawny interjects with unexpected cheer.

“Yeah, you could call it that.” Lenny chuckles. “All I know is, I haven’t been in one bank heist yet where we got away without getting shot at. No way this was going to be an exception.”

Just as Arthur’s about to exit the alley, a shot sounds from around the corner. The bullet whizzes by Trelawny, mere inches from impacting him. Arthur moves by instinct alone, leaping forward, roughly shoving the con man back into the relative protection of the alley, and then aiming the barrel of his rifle upward at the source of the shot.

Lenny has managed to position himself behind a thick wooden pillar, his bag sagging next to him, and cradles his rifle in his hands as the thick wooden block concealing him is punctured by bullets left, right, and center. Three men, all in uncomfortably familiar bowler hats and black suits, shoot vainly at the pillar.

Arthur forcibly slows his breath, aims his rifle, and shoots the man on the left in the chest. He lurches backward, his grip around his rifle loosening, and then he collapses to the ground with a slight thud. Arthur quickly dispatches the next man with a shot to the head, and Lenny leans around the pillar and shoots the third and last assailant square in the chest. Arthur surveys the scene with an uncomfortable mix of satisfaction and disgust. He’s never enjoyed this part of the job, per se, which is quite ironic considering it constitutes, at this point, at least 80% of it.

After quickly checking to see if Lenny is unharmed (he is, though he takes a moment to recover his breath and slump against the perforated column), Arthur pivots around to check on Trelawny.

His breath catches at the sight he is met with. Trelawny is still there, but there’s a new presence in the alley as well, a boorish-looking fellow who holds his revolver against Trelawny’s trembling head.

Trelawny’s eyes have gone wide, his mouth caught in a perpetual gape, and a lone bead of sweat rolls down his abnormally pale face. Arthur, for all his years of experience risking his own life and occasionally those of the gang, can’t help but freeze. He’s dealt with these hostage situations before, of course, in circumstances much more dire than those he currently finds himself in, but simply the sight of Trelawny’s frightened countenance inexplicably feels worse than all those times combined.

“Nobody needs to get hurt,” the man – the absolute bastard of a man – shouts angrily. “I won’t kill this man unless I have to.”

Arthur feels a certainly violent urge to tackle the man and punch his face in until he no longer has anything that could be identified as a nose. The more logical part of his mind, luckily, possesses him at the last second, and he forcibly slows his breathing to something that doesn’t resemble the panting of a furious bull.

“Let’s be reasonable about this,” he says, raising both hands and waving them around as if to emphasize the clear absence of a firearm in either. “You don’t want that man. He’s harmless.”

“And how the hell do I know you won’t shoot me as soon as I release him!?” the man retorts. Arthur can see it now in his eyes: the sheer panic, the crippling fear, the terror-induced rage that induced him to take another person hostage. Perhaps this man does have some strong conviction about the law, but, at this moment, he is much more concerned about surviving.

“I won’t have to,” Arthur says smoothly, willing his voice to not tremble. “My partner behind you’ll do it for me.”

The man doesn’t take a second to scrutinize Arthur’s statement. Without another word, he removes the pistol from Trelawny’s head, twirls around, and scans the area for the imaginary partner. In the time it takes him to realize he’s been tricked, Arthur has already put a bullet in the back of his head.

He falls to the ground with the pistol still raised in one hand. Trelawny blanches at the sight and scrambles away, all affectations of gentlemanly conduct forgotten in the heat of the moment.

“O-Oh, thank you, Arthur,” he says, his voice scratchy with some emotion Arthur isn’t sure he wants to understand. “I honestly thought I was going to die.” He rises unsteadily onto his feet and stares at nothing in particular. Arthur doesn’t think he’s ever seen him like this – unsettled, perhaps, or surprised, but never so shocked he lapsed into a dead silence. Arthur’s just honest enough with himself to acknowledge how much it terrifies him to see the other man like this.

“Trelawny,” he forces himself to say after several seconds. “We should get going. More men will be coming soon.”

Lenny peeks around the corner, his eyes growing wide at the corpse lying behind Trelawny. “What happened here? Are you two alright?”

“A-adequate,” Trelawny replies, and some of the color returns to his face. He seems almost, unfathomably embarrassed, as the red is restored in his cheeks in a darker tone than Arthur recalls he normally has.

“I scouted the next part of our route,” Lenny reports. “We’ll have to make a little detour, but the exit’s not been blocked yet. We should hurry before the lawmen wise up.”

Trelawny nods with something approaching his normal grace, but his hands still quiver as he leans down to pick up the bag. Like the cyclical rise of the tide, Arthur feels that increasingly present urge to simply reach out and touch the magician, but, as ever, it is matched by a fear that the other man will recoil and regard Arthur with newfound disgust. He isn’t sure he could handle it if that ever happened. It would be better, perhaps, to maintain a safe distance and cherish this strange friendship Arthur has with him.

At least, that’s what he tells himself.

“You seem a bit pale, dear boy,” Trelawny notes with remarkable joviality. Arthur isn’t sure whether to scoff, laugh, cry, or do all three at once. Here is this man, this absolute enigma of a man, who found himself at death’s door not twenty seconds ago, who Arthur once, justifiably enough, thought of as a selfish, sleazy eel who exploited everything and everyone he had to further his goals, who the camp still views as such, and who now is inquiring after Arthur’s health with genuine concern as if nothing could be more important at the moment.

“Me?” Arthur huffs out incredulously. “I’m fine.” And, for once, he thinks he might be telling the complete truth.

**Author's Note:**

> I can't guarantee when the next part of this will be coming out. It's meant to be more of a side project, and certainly one I intend on spending a lot of time on.
> 
> Also, I don't know what the next part's going to be about. Probably an important thing to figure out before I start writing.


End file.
